Carbon dating steel

Even though she’s now living outside Chicago, working for the Village of Burr Ridge town hall, Kowal has Iowa in her blood. The 2013 route would take her through her hometown of Des Moines and skirt the University of Iowa, carbon dating steel she graduated in 1987. Not long into the ride, however, Kowal’s bike shattered beneath her. For no apparent reason—she’d neither hit an obstacle nor encountered a pothole—the front fork snapped in half as if it had exploded from within.

Kowal was sent crashing into the pavement, helmet first. She fractured her spine and clavicle, suffered a concussion, and tore ligaments in her left thumb. After missing weeks of work and racking up medical bills for surgeries on her hand, Kowal sued in 2013. She went after the shop that sold her the bike, the one that serviced it, and then Giant itself. The lawsuit, filed in Cook County, Illinois, claims that a manufacturing defect in the fork’s carbon fiber caused it to fail.

Taiwan-based Giant quickly tried to bow out. The company argued in court filings that there’s an entirely independent Giant in the United States in charge of distribution to authorized retailers. While Giant of Taiwan made the bike, it can’t be held liable, the company claimed, because it doesn’t do business in Illinois, and the U. Giant shares no negligence either because it didn’t make the bike. It has been made in hundreds of similar lawsuits involving foreign-made bikes. In many of them, the logic has been enough to sway judges to throw out lawsuits or convince bike owners to settle.